The Vulnerable Capitalist

by | Dec 14, 2024

The Vulnerable Capitalist

by | Dec 14, 2024

“Popular literature attributes enormous ‘power’ to the capitalist and considers his owning a mass of capital goods as of enormous significance, giving him a great advantage over other people in the economy. We see, however, that this is far from the case; indeed, the opposite may well be true. For the capitalist has already saved from possible consumption and hired the services of factors to produce his capital goods. The owners of these factors have the money already for which they otherwise would have had to save and wait (and bear uncertainty), while the capitalist has only a mass of capital goods, a mass that will prove worthless to him unless it can be further worked on and the product sold to the consumers….

“[C]apital goods are not independently productive. They are the imputable creatures of land and labor (and time). Therefore, capital goods generate no interest income…. [No] income accrues to the owners of capital goods as such.”

—Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, Chap. 5, secs. 6 & 7, 1962

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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